KATHLEEN CLARKE

 

Her 1916 bronze medal, on a bronze clasp (without pin) and green and gold ribbon, without the original box.

Kathleen Daly Clarke [1879-1972] was a NIECE of the Limerick...

KATHLEEN CLARKE

 

Her 1916 bronze medal, on a bronze clasp (without pin) and green and gold ribbon, without the original box.

Kathleen Daly Clarke [1879-1972] was a NIECE of the Limerick Fenian John Daly, who shared many hard years of imprisonment in Britain with Tom Clarke. Daly was the first of the two to be released; he returned to Limerick where he opened a bakery and was elected Lord Mayor. When Tom Clarke was released in September 1898, he took up a long-standing invitation to visit his old comrade in Limerick, and there he struck up a close friendship with Kathleen, then a young girl of some 20 years. They went to the United States, where they married in 1901. In 1907 they returned to Dublin, where Clarke opened a tobacconists and newsagents shop, which functioned as unofficial HQ for the younger members of the I.R.B., and a centre for planning for the Rising as 1916 approached.

The day after the Rising ended, Kathleen founded what became the Irish Volunteers Dependants and National Aid Association, and resisted attempts to make her amalgamate with a Redmondite group. She collected and administered large sums of money distributed on a basis of need, to all those families who had lost their breadwinners in the Rising.
It was a most effective and influential organisation, and became more so when she chose as her assistant in August 1916 a young man just out of internment, named Michael Collins. It was the perfect position for Collins, giving him direct access to what remained of the I.R.B., and facilitating his reorganisation of the Volunteers.
An important memento of possibly the most significant female participant in the events of 1916 and later.

 

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